TWENTY-FIRST ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VII 605 



condemn that church or services of that character? This thought oc- 

 curred, however — what was the relative proportion of the two? 



Mr. Gates admitted that the amount of speculation exceeded the other 

 very greatly. In fact, I have been informed that there is forty times 

 as much grain bought and sold on the Chicago markets as actually goes 

 tnru the market. And we asked Mr. Gates if betting on the length of 

 the parson's prayer should exceed the other activities of the church by 

 that ratio, we might decide to take some exception to reforming the 

 situation. (Laughter). 



Now, the practices on these exchanges have got to be reformed. We 

 have got to do something about them. I don't know what it is yet. We 

 have got to study it out. 



When I was in Yale, Professor Sumner told our class one morning 

 of a visit he had had from a commission of financiers from Japan. Years 

 ago, one of his students became very much interested in his work and 

 on his return to Japan continued his studies along certain lines, and 

 during the course of years they created commissions to go about the 

 world studying systems and practices in other countries, and in the 

 course of their journey about the globe these men came to America. 

 Professor Sumner had made a specialty of financial systems, and on 

 this occasion this commission called on Professor Sumner and he advised 

 them concerning a financial system which he thought would be adaptable 

 to conditions in the Japanese Empire, on the opposite side of the globe, 

 and in time he was informed that his system had been adopted. 



A man without any influence, by sheer force of intellect, devised the 

 financial system for an empire on the other side of the globe. And that 

 practice of the Japanese of going about the world finding out the best in 

 the different countries, it seem to me, is a very fine lesson in our pres- 

 ent situation. 



In handling our grain, we want to find and adapt to our own use the 

 very best system that other folks have devised. We can not go off in a 

 corner and think it out for ourselves; we must study the experiences 

 of others; we must learn of their successes and their failures. We called 

 before us a representative of the grain people; we had before us Mr. 

 Powell, of the Citrus Fruit Association; we heard previously from a man 

 from the south, and now I think we are ready to begin with our own work. 



During the progress of our investigation a Canadian told us that on 

 the actual cost of their country stations they had earned less than 1 per 

 cent, but when they bought their elevators they had paid $600,000 more 

 than they ought to, and they made last year just slightly less than 2 per 

 cent on what the country stations were reasonably worth. He further 

 stated that they earned 15 per cent on an average on their terminal ele- 

 vators for a period of six years — annually 15 per cent. He told us fur- 

 ther that when they went into the exporting business the first year they 

 lost a million dollars, and the next year they employed an expert from 

 Europe, and during the first year his salary and commissions approached 

 $50,000 — but what happened? He transferred a deficit of a million intp 

 a profit of a quarter of a million, and also reduced the margin from 5 and 

 7 cents down to 1% cents on exports. 



